Prior to the fire

TG's childhood home on the morning of May 17, 2022 :: click to embiggen

For the past week or so I've been less than overwhelmed but more than preoccupied with a few events that have transpired.

Said events kept my mind astir with so many thoughts that I could not think about blogging.

Things have calmed down in the last day or two -- a lull, as it were -- so I was casting about for a subject with which to regale you, my cherished readers.

I still had not settled on a topic when, lo and behold, the universe provided one.

It's a sad story. You may need a Kleenex.

On the morning of Tuesday, May 17th, TG's childhood home in Rossford, Ohio, caught fire. The blaze began in the detached garage, which his mother had rebuilt after his dad's death in 2011.

This was the house that TG's sister, Ruth (who visited us last October), received as her part of the inheritance when my mother-in-law passed away in 2016.

The house, meant to be their forever family home, was built by TG's parents sixty-five years ago when TG was five, his brother was not quite four, and his sister was age two.

My father-in-law had just signed on to work as a math teacher and track and field coach with Rossford schools. He may have also coached basketball at some point.

This is is the well-worn and comfortable house that I first walked into on a typically damp and raw Northwest Ohio October night in 1978, having been dating TG for two months.

(We both lived a four-hour drive away in Northwest Indiana at the time, where TG was a biology/chemistry teacher and basketball coach, and I was fresh out of Bible college, living with a friend who was engaged to a boy from my home church in Atlanta, and working at the mall.)

We had left earlier in the day and traveled to South Bend, Indiana, where TG coached a soccer game. After the game, the team went home on the athletic bus and TG and I proceeded eastward along the Ohio Turnpike to Rossford, a bedroom community of Toledo.

I was nervous to meet TG's parents. What would they be like?

In TG's white 1974 Toyota Celica, we pulled up into the driveway of the small blue two-story dormered house on a double corner lot that you see in the photo above (cadged from Facebook). It had long been dark out, plus cold and drizzly, but warm light poured from the windows.

As I settled on the sofa just inside the lower-level left-hand window seen in the photo, my future mother-in-law (who went by the nickname Dolly), a tall, slender, attractive lady of fifty-two, asked if I would like a glass of apple cider.

TG and our children on his mother's doorstep, minutes before her viewing

Stanley, Stan to his friends, my six-foot-six next-June-to-be father-in-law, occupied an armchair across the room. At fifty-three, he was a handsome man, a WWII veteran, an enigmatic individual cultivated from stoic Ohio farming stock.

Both Stan's and Dolly's genes live on, strong, in my children -- both in their looks and their personalities. 

Stephanie is built like her grandfather's family and is practical and hardworking like her grandmother's. Erica resembles both her Grandpa, whom she favors at first glance, and her Grandma's father, whose likeness you can see if you look at a picture of him, then back at her.

Both she and Steph are taller, like the Webers and the Johnsons.

Andrew tends to favor my father more than the Weber side, just as Audrey favors my mother -- sometimes the two of them resembling their maternal grandparents in pictures to such an extent that it causes one to marvel at the mystery of DNA.

Their temperaments tend to coincide with those of the grandparents they take after, as well, some of the time.

But the features and mannerisms of all four grandparents are in there, in all of my kids.

You know what I mean.

Back in October of 1978, having been offered cider as a refreshment, I said: Could I have it heated up? As opposed to cold. I was chilled through to the bone from the day's activities.

Dolly Weber paused, peered at me for a few seconds, then gave a slight nod of assent and went into the kitchen, which was barely ten feet from where I was sitting.

I heard the rattling of pans and soon I was handed a steaming mugful of apple cider, for which I was most grateful. The beverage had been heated on the stove, the old-fashioned way.

Little did I know that my late mother-in-law was thinking (if not that night, then on subsequent nights, and days) something along the lines of, Oh no. No no no no noooooo not this one. Please not this one.

Haaahaha. Bygones.

(Her eldest, the son and heir, made me his choice and as such, her only choice was to deal with it. And I dearly loved my mother-in-law, and she loved me. We were just polar opposites, with the friction that is often the byproduct of that reality.)

It was what it was.

With Joel and the grandchildren added

As I watched the house burn in this video, also posted to Facebook, so many memories flooded my mind.

I recalled the day in late spring of 1979 when my mother, having driven from Atlanta, stopped in the street in front of 604 Marilyn Drive and put her car in park, jumped out, leaving the driver's side door open, and ran up to the house.

She was too excited to park in the driveway and turn her car off, before seeing me and meeting TG and his parents.

The reason for her appearance there was that a few friends and relatives were giving TG and me a small wedding shower in the living room where, several months earlier, I'd first met my future in-laws. TG and I were married a few weeks later in Atlanta.

For a long time, as our family expanded, we drove the miles from wherever we lived, to Grandma and Grandpa's house several times a year.

In fact, our children grew up going to that Grandma's much more than to their other Grandma's.

And when they did, what they experienced there was a one-hundred-percent, one-hundred-eighty-degree difference from the experiences they had at my mother's house. Neither was better or worse; just so different.

All but a few -- a very few -- memories of that house in Rossford are precious, wonderful, good ones.

There were Christmases -- for at least twenty-five years, we spent every Christmas there -- and of course the summertime trips, with their particular memories.

Sleeping upstairs at Grandma's -- up the stairs were two bedrooms, one large and one small, under the dormers -- had its own challenges. There was a bathroom at the top of the stairs, between the two bedrooms, that was so oddly built that, when you opened the door halfway, it hit the sink with a dull thud.

I can still hear it. (I mean, where was the building code for that?)

I could go on at length about that bathroom but I'll keep it brief. In the picture at the top of this post, in the upstairs rear of the house, do you see the part that juts out? That was the bathroom in question. If you stood in the bathtub and turned around towards the wall, you looked out of that wide window (the bottom edge of which was at just below chin level for me).

Right across from the sink, within a built-in cabinet that held towels and such, there was an opening with a chute attached where you stuffed the towels and sheets when you were fixing to leave and go back home, sending them down to the basement where they landed in a cage suspended near the washer and dryer.

The bathroom contained a tub but no shower, except for the years that there was some gizmo or other hooked onto the faucet to give you a sort of spray apparatus. But it always fell off.

That was tough for the decade of the '80s, when I was pregnant four times.

Distribution of roses at Grandpa's funeral

The pokey cinder-block shower that guests were expected to use was in the basement (near that laundry cage), and was so utilitarian -- so basement-y -- that I could not bear to go down there. IYKYK*.

I don't know why I did not just march my bad pirate self (well, to be honest, I was not a pirate then, more's the pity) into the bathroom on the main floor -- Grandma and Grandpa's bath, in the hall outside their bedroom -- and take my shower. But I didn't. Somehow it felt off limits.

Despite certain quirks in the accommodations, spending the night at Grandma's was special. In fact, the last time I slept there was on a night in August of 2017, waking up the next morning in the small upstairs bedroom to the soft breeze coming in the window just over my head, and hearing the mourning doves cooing outside as they always did. (That sound will always be Grandma's house.)

It was the day that TG and I drove up into Michigan to meet my dear friend and blogging buddy Mari and her husband Bob (Bon to me; IYKYK*), and have a wonderful meal with them.

We returned to Grandma's house one more time, that night, but we've never been back. Well, that is, I haven't. TG was on the property for three-quarters of an hour after our niece's wedding last summer.

Since Grandma's passing, the house has been inhabited by TG's sister Ruth and her ex-husband (don't ask) and, at least in recent years, two of their adult children and their partners, plus now, a newborn (Baby Atalia Hazel was born on April 10, 2022), and five dogs.

Everyone, plus the animals, got out safely, since the fire happened after Ruth and several others had gone to work for the day on Tuesday.

The house is a total loss. There may be one or two small things that can be salvaged, but that's all.

My sister-in-law told me last night that every piece of clothing she owns, including all of her shoes, was destroyed. She has only what she was wearing at work that day.

If that happened to me I would probably just lie down in the dirt and die.

Of course friends and family members have come forth to donate both new and used clothing, and we will all pitch in because Ruthie is our beloved sister and aunt, and we ache for her.

The family will be displaced for many months. It's stressful and they need our prayers.

Here is a series of photographs taken at the scene and posted on Facebook by a local who apparently is fascinated with fire trucks. And there were plenty to gawk at.

Drawing a line from the night in October of 1978 to a night in March of 2016, I walked into the house on Marilyn Road for one of the last times, thirty-six hours after my mother-in-law's death. For the first time in nearly forty years, Mom (that's what I called her) did not come towards me with a smile, and embrace me. 

My children receiving roses from their grandpa's casket spray

It hurt to enter the house -- her house, hers and Grandpa's -- with its familiar never-changing ambience, its homey sights and smells, and for her not to be there. I walked the short distance down the hall to her bedroom, where she had lived the last days of her life in a hospital bed.

The room was empty. Just the bare carpet, and her dresser and a nightstand. It was hard to imagine that she would never walk or talk or sleep there again, in her own bed.

And now it's gone forever.

Looking at the picture at the top of this post, I have another heartbreaking memory. 

Do you see the two windows on the side of the house (main floor) that's still mostly blue, instead of black from the fire? Specifically, the window on the right, where the blue is beginning to blacken?

Just inside there sat Grandma and Grandpa's kitchen table. Grandpa rose from that table for the last time on a January day in 2011, and had a massive stroke from which he never recovered.

A week or so later I was sitting at the table, drinking coffee, when I looked out of that window and saw something that caught my eye.

We had buried TG's dad the day before. His casket had been covered with a spray of gorgeous red roses.

After the graveside service (which was held in the mausoleum because it was so cold and the snow so deep), each family member was given one of the roses as a keepsake.

The morning after his dad's funeral, TG left before I did. He had to go back to work. I would be leaving the next day.

He'd been gone a short while when I looked out of the above-mentioned window and saw a red rose resting on a tree stump about thirty feet across the driveway and into the spare lot, straight ahead from the window.

It would have been not far from where the firefighter at the far left of the photo is walking away.

I was puzzled. Who had put that rose out there? I called TG and asked if he'd done it.

Yes, he said. Dad used to sit on that stump. I left it for him.

I will leave that for you.

We walked away from Grandma's burial and now we walk away from her house

It's the end of an era. There's a lot of sorrow; my children are grieving. Chad and Brittany never saw the house in Rossford, and now they never will, and neither will their children.

The other four grandchildren have seen it, but while the others may have dim memories, Dagny will not remember it.

TG is processing the tragic news quietly, as he tends to do everything. As for me, that house was the closest thing to an ancestral home that I have ever had.

Many right decisions that affected future generations in an enduring way, were made within the walls of that unassuming family home. No matter what changes and whatever time takes away, much of the fruit of those decisions remains.

It's a blessing today even more than it was a blessing then, and will always be as long as there are some who remember.

And that is all for now.

*If You Know You Know

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Happy Thursday

If memories had a mother

Hot Lips Couch: It holds your book so you don't have to.

Don't you love it when the memory is joggled (in this the week containing the one hundred thirty-fifth anniversary of Emily Dickinson's death, that word reminds me of her; her father gave her books but begged her not to read them, as they joggled the mind) at the opportune moment?

It happened to me last week.

I've conveyed to you recently my love of the web site Shorpy.

A recent post on that site reminded me of something about which I blogged some thirteen years ago, but had not thought of in a long time.

Audrey and me captured after church by Dagny on Mother's Day morning.

And that thing is Spanish Bar Cake.

The Shorpy post was not about the cake; it was about the store where one bought it.

And that store was the A&P. Home of Eight O'Clock Coffee and other delicacies.

We lived in lots of places and I am sure there were not A&P stores in all of them, but the A&P imprinted itself on my child mind. Probably because of Spanish Bar Cake but also due to my love of groceries in general.

This was our sign of the times, on display in the kitchen all week.

Although my mother was known more for her salt tooth (she craved potato chips) than for her sweet tooth, her desire for treats of the dessert kind was as well developed as anyone's.

Since our family traveled a great deal, from city to city, criss-crossing the United States in nomadic style, many is the meal my sister and I consumed in the back seat of a car.

I don't remember much about breakfasts but lunch was often a flat palm-sized tin of sardines shared between us, the top peeled back with a handy provided key, with saltine crackers to put the oily little fish on.

Top that if you're able.

My late mother circa 1942, or about age five.

Or else it was a tiny can of Vienna sausages, plucked out one at a time -- it was a challenge to grab the first one, so tightly packed and slippery were they -- and eaten in a single bite (or two if we were being dainty).

As often as not (especially if Mama was at work in her waitress uniform and we were either alone or gone fishing with Jake, our not-really-stepfather), our noon meal consisted of a loaf of Wonder Bread, a block of Philadelphia Cream Cheese, and a quart of Borden's milk. Everything was quite all white.

Earlier in the week I worked on my Mother's Day mailing.

Baloney sandwiches were involved on a regular basis as well.

But when we traveled, and a stop at a supermarket was necessary to buy some of the above-mentioned items, if it happened to be an A&P store, funds depending, Mama and Jake occasionally came back to the car (where Kay and I always had to wait) and pulled a Jane Parker Spanish Bar Cake (loaf shape) out of the grocery sack.

It was one of the more memorable specialties of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, baked for them along with a bevy of other sweets by bakeries bearing the name Jane Parker.

Cherica with Baby Rhett after his dedication on Sunday evening.

Now, sometimes the Spanish Bar Cake was an afternoon snack, not preceded by baloney; other times, it was proper dessert and we had to wait until we'd finished our sardines or sausages or whatever happened to be on our moveable feast menu du jour, before getting our grubby little hands on a slab of the cake.

Mama and Jake would have procured steaming cups of black coffee in cardboard cups, which they held in the same hands as they held their cigarettes, while with the other hand they fed themselves their servings of Spanish Bar Cake.

I hauled out my May decorations for the festive weekend.

Kay and I had no coffee and did not smoke, so we could devote our full attention to the dark moist cake with its coating of white icing applied in a corduroy design.

So it was that when Shorpy posted that picture of an A&P supermarket circa 1940, I commented that the A&P for me would always conjure one singular memory: the Spanish Bar Cake.

Another commenter kindly provided me with a link to an online recipe for the cake. I was already aware of it; in fact I have at least two recipes for "authentic genuine original" Spanish Bar Cake in my recipe file.

Mama and me with Stephanie and Audrey circa 1985, Chicago, Illinois.

I've never tested the recipes, but years ago a friend made the cake for me. It was so wide of the mark that I had to feign enthusiasm upon tasting it, although I was of course grateful to my friend for attempting to recreate my childhood memory.

Something of which I was not aware, however, is that certain investors have revived the Jane Parker bakery and claim to be producing and selling the Spanish Bar Cake exactly as it was when I was a child in the sixties.

One eighteen-ounce loaf cake will set you back thirty-six dollars. But that includes shipping.

I picked up this bookish angel bunny twenty years ago at the dollar store.

Should I or will I spring for that? What do you think? My initial thought was, ummm, NOPE. Like, who do they think they are?

But on further reflection I wonder if it would be worth that prodigious sum, to taste my childhood again.

If memories had a mother, she would be named Nostalgia. Her allure is strong and may yet prevail.

L to R Erica and Audrey: Two of my three beautiful daughters.

How was your Mother's Day? Ours was exceedingly pleasant and sweet, like a Spanish Bar Cake.

To rewind just a trifle, when my sister was visiting with me overnight the weekend before last, when our half-brother Mike and his daughter Shelby came to see us, Kay and I were reminiscing a good bit.

I mentioned that I'd read somewhere that childhood memories are less factual than they are emotional. That what we think we remember word for word, event for event, exactly as it happened, may not in fact have gone down in precisely that way.

I adorned my lighted trees with pink ribbon for the feminine holiday.

She agreed and asked if I'd read the memoir Educated by Tara Westover. I said I hadn't, and she said that the author mentions that exact phenomenon in her book. 

Intrigued, I ordered Educated from Thriftbooks and am reading it now. It's fascinating and so far, I can recommend it as an ideal summer read.

Then last week, on Thursday, TG and I traveled to East Tennessee to attend the wedding of our nephew's son, or our great-nephew.

Four precious cards from four precious children.

After the wedding I was having a long-overdue conversation with our niece Angie, whom I'd not seen in a number of years.

She asked if I'd read The Memoir Project by Marion Roach Smith. No, I said. But I immediately ordered it and am one-third of the way through, and I can recommend it wholeheartedly for anyone with an interest in writing.

(Especially with an interest in writing your memories. Or a memoir, which is not the same as an autobiography, which would no doubt fascinate you but is not likely to be compelling to anyone else.)

Our great-nephew Brandon with his new bride Maryanna.

Angie also shared that she had read and been greatly moved by the book Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate. She wondered if I'd had a chance to read it. No, I said. But my copy will be arriving this week and soon the answer will be yes.

Speaking of books, Andrew and Brittany sent me, earlier this past week but I waited all the way until Saturday to open it, the Hot Lips Book Couch pictured at the top of this post.

It's for holding your tablet or book while you read. I do not own a tablet but as I am currently working my way through three separate books (the two just named, plus re-reading Steven Pressfield's The War of Art), and am about to start reading a fourth title when it lands on my doorstep, this will come in handy.

I think you can't go wrong with pink.

It holds your book in the embrace (well, mouth) of a cushy pillow that is just the right size for your lap. I love it! It's so me.

Stephanie sent a Mother's Day greeting containing a generous gift card to Home Goods. I know just what I might get.

On Sunday, we went to church. Erica left before she could be included in the shot, but Dagny took a picture of Audrey and me in the parking lot. We don't show it, but we were shivering. See below.

Audrey and Dagny and Cherica were with us for lunch at our house. They'd planned a cold cut buffet with meats and cheeses and croissants and other breads, plus chips and a beautiful fruit salad. I contributed homemade chicken salad.

A friend gave me the sugar skull shakers; I picked up the petit four shakers from Cracker Barrel.

The girls went in on a lovely tennis bracelet for me, to layer with my other arm candy. I love it! It's so me.

Can you believe, it was cold here on Sunday? The temperature struggled to get over sixty, and even though it was sunny, there was considerable breeziness and we were pulling out our sweaters by the evening.

Speaking of Sunday evening, at the end of our short service at church, we had a baby dedication.

Two infants were dedicated: Baby Rhett and a wee girl a few months younger than him.

Brittany gave me this sweet bottle a few years ago.

As Rhett's grandparents, we were asked to come up and stand beside Chad and Erica and the baby, and Audrey and Dagny came too, and the other baby's grandparents and family members stood beside her and her parents, and then other parents joined us in a show of support.

Together as a church we prayed for the children, that they would grow up to trust and love the Lord.

Then Chad, with Erica beside him, toted Rhett up onto the platform, where our grandson received a certificate marking the occasion, plus a tiny baby-blue New Testament and Psalms with his name on the front.

Yay! said Baby Rhett.

Then we took more pictures to memorialize it all, and went out into the cool evening, and home to take it easy.

I'd say we had a productive and memorable day. Did you? Please tell me how you celebrated.

And that is all for now.

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Happy Tuesday

Circling back

We climbed out onto a heretofore largely unexplored branch of our family tree

Here we are at last to reveal what our big fancy to-do was all about last Saturday.

I hope you have not died on the vine while waiting for the arrival of this news.

Apologies ahead of time for the necessity of covering a bit of ground that is familiar to some of my readers, in order to explain the significance of the occasion.

My sister brought these lovely flowers from her garden

So let's get started.

My parents divorced when I was about two years old. My big sister Kay was three.

My sister and I never saw our dad again after early 1959, when our parents went their separate ways.

Mike and our big sister Kay, meeting for the first time

Each of our parents went on to marry again. In fact, they each married two more times.

Our mother remarried in April of 1962. She and her second husband had two children together: my half-sister Deann, born in 1967, and my half-brother Shawn, born in 1969. They later divorced. Twice.

It's complicated.

I was pretty proud of those tree trunk place card holders

Our father, after a brief second marriage, married for the third and final time in March of 1963. He and his wife had two children together: my half-brother Michael, born in 1965, and my half-sister Lisa, born in 1967.

Kay and I, growing up as we did in the custody of our mother, knew the two half-siblings with whom we share the maternal parent.

Mike and me ... first ever picture together

Meanwhile, our other half-siblings, Mike and Lisa, were born and have always lived in California. We had no knowledge of them when they were born, or for several years afterwards.

Then, in a tragic turn of events, our father's life ended as the result of a plane crash on September 13, 1968.

He was one month shy of his thirty-eighth birthday.

You know there always has to be a sign of the times

Mike was not quite three years old, and Lisa only fifteen months, when their dad was suddenly gone.

Kay and I were aged twelve and eleven respectively when our dad died, but because of circumstances, we did not learn of his death until two years later, in September of 1970.

Me and my big sis hanging out by the pool

Neither I nor Kay nor Mike nor Lisa have any real memory of our dad. We have pictures and a few mementoes; nothing more. Just scraps.

Of course Mike and Lisa have their mom and Kay and I had ours, and both of them certainly knew our dad well enough to tell us about him.

To write my brother's name on a place card at my own table was a big deal to me

But as for Kay and me, we did not learn much about our father from our mother. I have a sense that Mike and Lisa have been given only the broad strokes as well.

I think our dad was the kind of person who liked to shoot from the hip and keep moving. Not someone overly concerned with leaving a meaningful legacy for his children. After all, according to my mom, his mantra was live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse.

Philippe, Kay, me, and TG with Mike and Shelby

I will leave it up to you to decide how successful he was, and whether he'd change anything if he had a do-over.

But we can probably agree that he was certainly not someone who really, truly expected to make his final exit at age thirty-seven.

Perhaps if he'd lived longer, he would have given more thought and energy to a lot of things.

Seven-layer salad with lots of bacon from a bag

But alas, he lived what amounts to half a life, by the measurement of what we consider a normal lifespan.

Over thirty years ago I had a brief contact with my father's third wife, whose name is Inge, as well as with my half-sister Lisa. We exchanged a few letters and talked on the phone once.

The interaction between us was genuine and heartfelt, as far as it went. Inge sent me a number of letters and photos -- bits of ephemera that had belonged to my dad. But we did not stay in touch.

Newfound uncles and nieces and nephews and great-nephews and cousins going on

(My father was an only child, and I also have a few things of his -- pictures and whatnot; nothing of value -- through his mother, my grandmother who died in 1983.)

As they tend to do, the years rolled on. TG and I were busy rearing our children. Everyday life crowded the consciousness and pushed non-essential things back into the shadows.

Then, about nine years ago, my half-brother Mike contacted me through this blog.

My sister loaded her ice cream dessert with homemade butter brickle and salted caramel from a jar

He had been searching online for anything he could find about our father, and stumbled on either my blog or our dad's Find a Grave page (which I created and maintain), and one led to the other, and then to me.

We have talked on the phone many times since then, and have made it a point to be thoughtful of one another and of each other's families.

Mike was loving, kind, and generous when Dagny came along, sending her a beautiful play yard, wanting to be a help to Audrey.

What's happening here is that Dagny is performing to make Baby Rhett look at the camera. It isn't working.

I have sent Mike's three children gifts and have spoken with them, and with his wife Jennifer, by phone several times.

But it -- and they -- all seemed so far away. I'm not about to get on a plane and fly to California, and Mike and Jennifer were busy with work and family life, and through the years we did the best we could.

There were times when a year or more would go by without a real conversation between us.

The devil is in the details

Then one day at the end of March, I was taking a walk when my phone rang. I looked and saw that it was Mike.

We talked for several minutes and then he revealed the real purpose for his call: He was coming to see me.

Mike and Jennifer's middle child is a daughter. Her name is Shelby Anne and she is eighteen.

Kay had brought Mike a picture album of her children and grandchildren

As such, Shelby is graduating from high school and about to go away to college. She is not only a Christian but a staunch conservative -- seriously, you would have loved hearing her talk.

She's got it going on. In spades. Brains and beauty.

it was comfortable poolside for relaxation and conversation

Shelby has made up her mind to become a constitutional lawyer. She wants to spend her life defending our beloved country and the documents that made -- and keep -- America exceptional.

She has tentatively chosen Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, as her school. Mike had committed to flying east with Shelby so that they could both tour the campus. The tickets were bought.

I found plates and napkins with a wood (tree) theme. I already had the wrought leaf bowl.

And Mike had decided that when they were finished with that, they were going to drive the four hours south to Columbia, to see me. Have I told you that he is a treasure? Well, he is. A total treasure, and a gentleman.

Of course I was overjoyed -- both that they were coming, and that I had a whole month to prepare for their visit.

Shelby with Uncle Philippe and Aunt Kay

The first thing I did was call my sister, Kay, in Greenville. She confirmed that she and her husband would come to meet Mike and Shelby, and celebrate with all of us here.

So it was that last Saturday, at about eleven o'clock in the morning, I stood in my driveway as my brother from another mother got out of his rented car and wrapped me in a bear hug.

Mike and Shelby with Kay and Philippe

I am sixty-five years old; Mike is fifty-six. We'd never laid eyes on one another in person, until that moment. He strongly resembles our dad -- even more so in person than in pictures.

Shelby was soon hugging me too, and we all started chatting and talking as though we had known one another forever and had just been apart for a while.

I decorated with lighted trees and pictures of my dad

(Of course you know that the pirate has no trouble keeping up her end of the conversation.)

It wasn't long before Erica and Chad arrived, then Kay and her husband Pierre-Philippe, and then TG was home with two big bags of ice for the drinks bucket, and then Audrey and Dagny were there and everyone was embracing and getting acquainted.

Stephanie had planned to come from North Carolina with at least one of her children, but was brokenhearted when a member of their church passed away earlier in the week.

Mike and Shelby with me and TG

The funeral was set for Saturday, and as the Pastor's wife she was both obligated to be there, and wanted to be there.

I bet you have figured out, as I have, that you cannot be in two places at the same time.

More's the pity.

Kay made pulled pork and brought the BBQ sauce to go on it

And of course Andrew and Brittany could not come, as they're in Oklahoma.

But Mike told me that although this was his first visit to South Carolina, it would most certainly not be his last. And I made him promise that when he comes back, he will bring his wife Jennifer and their youngest, my niece Savannah Marie.

Mike and Jennifer adopted Savannah from China when she was nine months old. She is now fourteen.

Kay and me with our not-so-little brother from another mother

Their oldest, a son named Aiden Guy, was just married the week before Easter. I hope that he and his new bride, Luna, will come out and spend time with us too. They are all always welcome.

So what did we do on Saturday, after everyone had been introduced?

We had a party. Something which I am pretty sure does not come as a shock to you.

You want color? We had color.

For the entirety of last week, I laid my final plans and accomplished all of my shopping.

I spent Friday cooking, and decorating the table.

Our theme was The Family Tree. 

Speaking of color ... look at Baby Rhett's eyes

I bought some lighted tree decorations from Amazon, as well as place card holders that look like little hunks of tree trunk.

I worked for many hours on producing a McManus Family Tree using Ancestry dot com and other sources, and printed it out for my brother Mike and my sister Kay.

Our niece Shelby is as sweet and feisty as she is beautiful

Because of our father's brief existence on this earth, there are four children, sixteen grandchildren, and twenty-eight (so far) great grandchildren.

That's forty-eight souls. And counting. Like the old song says, nature can be fascinating!

Mike and Shelby loved getting to know Audrey and Dagny

My sister and I had planned a buffet consisting of my spicy cranberry meatballs, her pulled pork, my seven-layer salad and deviled eggs, her carrot salad and beet salad, and my party potatoes and Crock Pot cream corn.

Erica had brought some luscious Hawaiian dinner rolls.

For dessert we had my strawberry pretzel salad and my sister's butter brickle ice cream dessert, which involves salted caramel. She had also brought homemade chocolate chip cookies.

Some words were said and tears were shed around the table before we sang, prayed, and ate

Of course there were all kinds of soft drink and sparkling water choices, plus coffee -- both regular and decaf.

Before the meal, everyone sat outside by the pool for a couple of hours. The weather was perfect-to-hot-and-sticky. I lasted for a while but then had to go back inside where it was cool.

Our desserts were pretty much off the chain

We ate at about three thirty, but before we sat down, we stood around the table. I had prepared some remarks about the reason we were all there together. Tears were shed but they were the good kind.

Mike had a few words to say, and then my sister affirmed how grateful she was to God for His mercy in preserving us and blessing our families and bringing us all to that day.

Three sweet, pretty, delightful girl cousins

Then we sang the first verse of Amazing Grace, and TG prayed for the meal, and we ate.

It was delicious. I wish you could have had some.

After everyone was full, several of the party piled into an SUV and took Mike and Shelby for a drive-by tour of Lake Murray and points beyond the Dreher Shoals Dam, which sits about two miles from our house.

Shelby fell instantly in love with her first cousins once removed

The rest of us hung out and loaded the dishwasher and made a pot of coffee and relaxed.

Later, as the light was becoming perfect outside for such things, we took pictures for nearly an hour. I had written down various groups for poses, and we had fun with all of that.

Then it was time to go back inside and dish up dessert, which we ate out by the pool in the gloaming, with the solar lights and my fairy lights winking on.

Dagny immediately glommed onto Shelby and rarely left her side

Shelby and Dagny dangled their bare feet in the pool.

Everybody talked and talked and talked until nearly ten o'clock and we knew it was time to wrap it up.

With reluctance -- even though we were all bone tired -- we took nearly another hour to say our goodbyes.

We have the same mother and same father. It's a phenomenon in our family.

Mike and Shelby were staying nearby but had to catch a plane out of Charleston before noon the next day. We wouldn't see them again this trip.

Kay and Philippe stayed with us overnight. The next morning we enjoyed coffee and more reminiscing until they too left for home and I was back to a quiet house.

I don't know what to say except that it was a wonderful day, a once-in-a-lifetime occasion which has now become a most cherished precious memory.

Our enlarged family circle. Click to embiggen.

Also I like to think that had he lived, our dad would have loved each of us, and would have been happy that we were together even for one day, active moving parts of a loving family that stubbornly survives, still vibrant, across miles and years, despite circumstances and setbacks, tragedy and heartache, human frailty and failure, misgivings and mistakes, the vagaries of time, and all other enemies both natural and supernatural.

To God be the glory for the things He has done, and for His mercy, grace, and faithfulness to us, His servants.

And that is all for now.

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Happy Tuesday